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Photo by Scott
Quintard UCLA Photo
Before a packed house in Royce Hall, Iranian human rights
advocate and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi spoke passionately
about Islam and democracy. |
supporting human rights in the muslim world
Nobel laureate shares her hopes for peace
BY AJAY SINGH
UCLA Today Staff
Shirin Ebadi is a diminutive Iranian human rights advocate and
author who speaks with poetic eloquence and great conviction. When
she received the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo last December, she
declared that the tribute would inspire oppressed Muslim women everywhere.
But Ebadi, a former judge and the first Muslim woman to win the
Nobel Prize, did not rebuke Iran’s theocratic regime, which
has imprisoned her and numerous others for championing the rights
of the oppressed. Instead, she sharply criticized the United States
for what she said were its own human rights abuses in the name of
fighting terrorism.
In an impassioned speech to a packed audience of around 1,400
at Royce Hall May 14, it was clear that she’s still trying
to walk a tightrope between supporting the world’s oppressed
and openly offending Iran’s authoritarian government. Her
critics are incensed, but then Ebadi, 56, has always been a moderate
both in speech and action.
Although she has been physically attacked and threatened with
death by religious conservatives in Iran, Ebadi believes in solving
social problems through peaceful and democratic means. In a country
scarred by the violent, Islamic revolution of 1979, she’s
a vital link between religious hardliners, reformists and the secular
elite.
An advocate of modern, reformist Islam, Ebadi argued for a new
interpretation of Islamic jurisprudence that is in harmony with
secular Western ideas. “Democracy and human rights are common
needs of all countries and cultures,” she said during a lecture
sponsored by the Ronald W. Burkle Center for International Relations
at UCLA. But democracy, she cautioned, alluding to U.S.-led efforts
to democratize Iraq, “can’t be exported with weapons
and cluster bombs.”
Ebadi told her audience, many of whom came from the Los Angeles
Iranian community, that Islam has lately been demonized in the West,
but “people should not be deceived that Islam and democracy
are not compatible. We can have both.” Dressed in Western-style
trousers and without the chador that she uses in public to cover
her head back home, Ebadi received at least a half-dozen standing
ovations. She was occasionally heckled by Iranian-born monarchists,
one of whom waved a banner proclaiming, in Farsi, “Down with
the regime in Iran.” A Q&A was moderated by Geoffrey Garrett,
vice provost of UCLA’s International Institute and director
of the Burkle Center.
Although Ebadi avoided directly criticizing the Islamic Republic
of Iran, she pleaded for the human rights of those languishing in
Iranian jails. She also deplored the world’s rising poverty,
whose first casualties, she stressed, are women “because they
are the victims of social discrimination.” In Iran, said Ebadi,
63% of university students are female, yet Iranian women are three
times as poor and live half as long as Iranian men.
Ebadi made a passionate plea for furthering world peace, offering
a simple plan: Teachers and concerned citizens, whom she called
“columns of peace,” should take the peace process forward
at international venues. Ebadi also urged educational institutions
to forge global connections aimed at translating foreign-language
books and offering courses in international education.
“It is only in peace that the tree of knowledge bears fruit,
the vehicle of civilization goes forward,” she said poetically.
But achieving peace is a most delicate matter. “Peace has
two layers — the internal and the external,” Ebadi explained.
“Without inner peace, external peace is impossible, and without
external peace, there is no inner tranquility.”
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